Blocking The Pirate Bay – where do you stand?

UK internet providers have been ordered to lower the Jolly Roger and block access to file-sharing site The Pirate Bay. Is this the right way to deal with the issue, or will illegal file-sharers just get their jollies elsewhere?

The High Court has laid down the law to Sky, Virgin, TalkTalk, O2 and Everything Everywhere, with BT soon to follow. All of the major UK ISPs are to block access to the Pirate Bay within weeks, with 3.7 million UK users of the site likely to be affected.

High Court Judge Mr Justice Arnold stated resolutely that The Pirate Bay was allowing ‘both users and operators to infringe the copyright of the claimants in the UK’. The decision has immediately been welcomed by the British Phonographic Industry, but other voices are cautious about the implications of this move.

Censorship on the high seas?

Internet advocacy groups are already insisting that the move to block access to The Pirate Bay is a worrying sign of censorship. Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said:

‘Blocking The Pirate Bay is pointless and dangerous. It will fuel calls for further, wider and even more drastic calls for Internet censorship of many kinds, from pornography to extremism.’

However, is blocking a site which facilitates an illegal activity really as bad as Mr Killock is making out? His argument is that it’s a slippery slope from blocking The Pirate Bay to blocking a site which promotes political views that could be deemed illegal by a ruling government.

But let’s take that argument off the internet and on to the street. Would banning illegal DVD-sellers from a town centre be considered a slippery slope to banning assembly of political groups? I wouldn’t argue so.

The right way to stop illegal file-sharing?

Aside from the censorship debate, there’s a greater issue of whether blocking access to one site, even a very prominent one, will truly settle the problem of illegal file-sharing.

The Pirate Bay doesn’t store the illegal files itself – instead it provides a simple means for finding where they are and where they can be shared. If The Pirate Bay is blocked, there will be plenty of other sites out there that can do the same.

To use another analogy, if you closed down a factory which produced plastic vials known to be used in the drugs trade, this wouldn’t stop the drugs trade itself. People would just use other containers.

Will the Digital Economy Act solve anything?

Perhaps the long-delayed Digital Economy Act (DEA) will prove a more effective tool, though its implementation has now been shelved until 2014. Under the DEA, suspected file-sharers will be notified by their ISPs that if they continue to do so their details will be shared with copyright owners.

It’s a solution that hasn’t satisfied all parties involved, least of all the ISPs, who are baulking at having to shoulder the cost and responsibility of contacting their customers in this manner.

But as the debate over blocking The Pirate Bay shows, there’s no easy way to navigate the issue of illegal file-sharing, and undoubtedly there are rough waters ahead.

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Well this has got me thinking, good ol Noel Edmonds and his multi colored swap shop
Flashback!
apart from being a crime against good taste
if a child of or above the age of criminal responsibility had called Noel, and inquired if they could swap a Duran Duran LP for an ABBA cassaste .. would this constitute theft, copyright infringement
and could Noel held accountable as Co-conspirator?

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what about that record we earthlings sent to space (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record), first contact war because of copyrights infringements, the aliens had to transfer it to digital format then play it abroad their ship for all to hear lol public broadcast issues.. end of the day it is still all about that has no value in space, money that is not within your control and something some very corrupt people in power can manipulate(bank interest rate manipulation case). the real issue is internet was your own private space where you felt free to do as you wish and forget about real world issues for a few moments, any visitors are there because they want to be there if it offends them they can simply not come to my site but all in all that site has the right to exist because it is almost like a person with a personality(part of your own personality) in cyberspace, you take that away and there comes inequality issues. /thought police. arrested on intention to break into neighbors wifi just because you googled ‘how to hack in to wifi wpa2/psk’ they just wouldn’t listen when you say it is only for informational purposes(arrests were made just because some had a copy of anarchists cookbook) i mean why would you buy a knife if you not plan to kill someone ay ;p to censor the web is to attack individual freedom as well as undermining ones own judgement by authorities on your own personal space. just remember that you wouldn’t kill a person or make it so that person can’t communicate no longer just because you don’t like them; however you would avoid them thus learning to co-exist slowly. web is a similar concept. people should be educated not controlled!

Further to my comments on 1st May. I know I’m a bit slow here (and sorry for the choice of film) but I’ve just noticed that there’s an Expendables Extended Cut, which the film makers made no reference to when the original was released. Are they really hoping I’ll now go and buy that, then get Expendables 2 and in 6 months then get the extend cut of that and then a few months later the boxset of 1 & 2 . Its pure greed on behalf of the film industry no wonder people resort to pirating their wares. And if they don’t like people pirating their films then they really need to take a long hard look in the mirror. Maybe they should offer an exchange program and refund say 50% of the original cost when buying an “upgrade”. i.e Normal -> Extended cut etc.

Google has removed the Pirate Bay from auto-complete search. ‘When users begin to type “thepirat…”, no web pages belonging to the file-sharing website appear in the drop-down list of suggested search terms, until its full name is entered.’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19557469

Sadly as everyone apart from those overpaid legal types will know, that’s not going to make much difference. I’ve just tried bing dot com, yahoo dot com and both quite happily auto complete “the pira” for you. Other search engines are also available I’m just too lazy to find a more comprehensive list.

I’m amazed at clearly how dim legal people can be, yet they’re all alot richer than I, and probably all still have jobs.

And sadly not even the people at google are that bright, try typing in “bay pir” and see what’s displayed.

I don’t know what all the fuss is about. The ”block” is easy enough to bypass. It took me less than 10 minutes to find a tutorial on Youtube sohwing very simply how to bypass it. There are several ways seemingly. I decided to use what must be the simplest.